| abstract
| - A rather bleak Table Top Role Playing Game set in a dystopian future, Unhallowed Metropolis presents a world where history departed from ours in a rather dramatic fashion. In December of 1905, human civilisation almost ended. Across the world, the dead began to rise and feast upon the flesh of the living. A years-long war followed, in which survivors desperately fought at first for mere survival, and later to reclaim the zombie-infested cities. Eventually, the more powerful nations of the time managed to return to something resembling a stable society, with large numbers of humans crammed into fortified cities while Animates (the 'scientific' term for zombies) prowled the Blighted countryside. Skip forward two centuries to the year 2105, and things aren't much better. The game focuses primarily on what's going on in London, and portrays an exceptionally grim view of life in a post-apocalyptic metropolis. The Plague which gave rise to the animate hordes has mutated, producing various undead monstrosities. Bloodthirsty vampires and human psychopaths have come crawling out of the woodwork to prey upon the faceless masses. Many of mankind's attempts to fight or harness the Plague have backfired spectacularly, though they have also resulted in some unexpected and rather awesome advances in the fields of medicine, alchemy and galvanics. Unhallowed Metropolis contains examples of:
* Abnormal Ammo: Stake guns, syringe guns, alchemical rounds....
* After the End
* Alternate History
* Amazon Brigade: Mourners. Their Weapon of Choice? The kukri. Two of them if possible.
* Aristocrats Are Evil: To various degrees.
* Badass Army: The Deathwatch.
* Badass Longcoat
* Blessed with Suck: Being a dhampir comes with a number of nice bonuses... and a few really terrible downsides.
* Brain In a Jar: A requirement for certain forms of reanimation
* Came Back Wrong: An inviolable rule of the setting. Anyone who comes back from the dead is, at best, no longer truly the person they were in life... and is more often a savage, ravening beast.
* Chainmail Bikini: Combat corsets. More practical than they sound -- Corsets actually cover a decent portion of the vitals, and they mesh better with ordinary clothing, such as the mourning that serves as a uniform for the Mourners, than standard armor.
* City Noir: The Metropolis.
* Coat, Hat, Mask: The Deathwatch have bowlers, gas masks and trenchcoats as their standard uniform.
* Combat Sadomasochist: The local flavor of vampires.
* Crapsack World: Really, just saying it's a Crapsack World doesn't do it justice. There's been 200 years of zombies, 196 years of restless ghosts, 177 years of flesh-eating ghouls, 161 years of Thropes, and 152 years of vampires. Entire countries and regions no longer exist in any meaningful sense of the word. Bizarre blighted wastelands are expanding throughout the world. The dominant power of the world is a new Victorian Britain with its social inequities and depravities turned up to 11. France is ruled by a mysterious king who is almost certainly not human, and what little information on its state escapes its borders suggests that terms like "unholy" and "unnatural" barely suffice to describe what's going on there. The air in London is so foul that going out without a gas mask or at least a damp cloth can lead to unconsciousness and death. Anarchists plague London, failing to realize that although there are very real social ills, dealing with them by dismantling the government entirely will just end up killing everyone still living in the UK. On top of all this, it's hinted that the Zombie Apocalypse is actually the least of the world's problems -- that the world has become wrong on some deep, fundamental level, and the rise of the undead is just the most obvious symptom. And the heroes? The only people who can make a difference, make things better? They're suffering from physical, mental, or moral corruption -- as is anyone who isn't is doomed to inevitable death -- and they're likely to just get worse as they fight for humanity's future. This is not a nice setting. If this sounds a bit much, you may want to head for something happier and more optimistic, like Warhammer 40000 or the New World of Darkness.
* Cyberpunk with a Chance of Rain: Acid rain, most likely.
* Dhampyr: A Player Character option.
* And they're Different. In addition to offspring of vampires, Dhampiri also include people who survive vampiric infection without proper medical care -- only someone who's dead can be a vampire, but unless you receive a complete blood transfusion within a week of infection, you can't just shake it off and return to normal, either.
* Fire-Breathing Weapon: Flamethrowers are present.
* Fog of Doom: The smog of London is nasty, nasty stuff.
* For Science!: The motivation that led to, among other things, creating Mercurial Animates.
* Gas Mask Longcoat: See Coat, Hat, Mask above.
* Gas Mask Mooks: Almost everyone wears a gas mask due to the smog.
* Gone Horribly Wrong: All attempts at curing The Plague, Creating Life or attaining immortality have done this.
* Gone Horribly Right: Dr. Merrifield's Pandemonious Timidifier was intended to harmlessly incapacitate rioters with paralyzing fear. Side effects include seizures, permanent brain damage and heart failure.
* Grey and Gray Morality: At best.
* Hunter of His Own Kind: Dhamphiri, due to their Undead Sense, are notoriously good at this.
* I Hate You, Vampire Dad: All dhamphiri rather dislike vampires in general.
* Lightning Can Do Anything: The basis of the science of Galvanics.
* Lightning Gun: Literal examples.
* Mad Scientist
* Not That Kind of Doctor: Averted, every Player Character Doctor is at least that kind of doctor.
* Not Using the Z Word: Partially, anyway. Most people use the Z-word, but the technical term is "animate".
* Played straighter with werewolves, who are universally called "thropes".
* On a related note, the material for the game avoids the terms "supernatural" or "paranormal", instead favoring archaic or disused terms like "preternatural", "supernormal", and "extramundane."
* Of Corsets Sexy: Naturally, considering the setting.
* Our Ghouls Are Creepier: While technically undead and deformed, the strain of the Plague they're infected with leaves them with some of their humanity; those who can curb their violent impulses are more or less tolerated. And by tolerated we mean being treated as an inferior minority to be exploited at leisure as long as they don't get uppity.
* Our Vampires Are Different: Vampirism can be passed as an STD. Just for a start.
* Our Werewolves Are Different: 'Thropes' are created by a Jekyll and Hyde-style serum that turns them into hulking, feral beasts.
* Our Zombies Are Different: Between animates, zombie lords, Mercurials, the witch-doctor-controlled zombies rumored to exist in Central Africa and the bizarre rule-breaking animates of Hong Kong, nearly every major type is represented in some form.
* The Corruption: Every Player Character starts with a touch of it -- because people who don't have at least a touch of it invariably die, becoming the victim of supernormal or mundane horrors.
* The Hunter: Undertakers hunt supernatural creatures for fun and profit.
* The Grotesque: Common enough, in various flavors.
* The Virus: The Plague, in many different variants.
* Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Anyone who isn't at least a bit tainted will come to a bad end, likely sooner rather than later.
* Victorian London: The Metropolis
* Zombie Apocalypse
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